Dear Neutra VDL House Community,
This summer marks the end of my six years as Resident Director of the Neutra VDL House.
It has been an honor, and it’s one that I don't take lightly. My relationship with this house began as a student docent at Cal Poly Pomona, and returning to it as director, years later, felt like the opportunity of a lifetime. The VDL has always been more than a landmark— it is a place of ongoing cultural experimentation across art, design, architecture, and scholarship, one that proves a historic house stays alive through the people who use it and the ideas it continues to generate. My goal was to continue that mission for the house, not as a frozen monument, but a living, active, and accessible place.
I'll never forget the panic during heavy rains, moving buckets around the living room to catch the drips from a failing roof. The relief of finally fixing it, and then filling the reflecting pool again for the first time after repairs, was one of the best moments of my six years here. Significant conservation work was completed during this time: the main roof, the garden house bathroom, the main plumbing, and glass window repairs. It is unglamorous work, and it is what makes everything else possible.
Keeping the house open to the public was its own form of preservation. What that looked like in practice was often mundane and meaningful because of it. Waking up early every Saturday to clean the glass, fill the pools, and prepare the gardens before visitors arrived from all over the world. Watching travelers peer through the curtain gaps before opening time, eager to finally step inside. Visitors never ran out of things to notice. There was always a detail they hadn't seen before, a question they hadn't thought to ask, a reminder that this is the only Neutra house regularly open to the public. I always loved receiving that email days after a group visit from students, saying how much the tour had changed the way they thought about architecture and domestic space. Those were always warm reminders that the VDL's vitality was alive and well.
One of my proudest contributions was developing a student workshop series that brought architects from around the world to work directly with Cal Poly Pomona students, giving students access to practitioners they wouldn't otherwise meet, and giving those practitioners a chance to engage deeply with the house, the students, and Los Angeles in return. During the workshop with Fernanda Canales and Pablo Kobayashi, students built inflatable walls to test configurations of space and privacy, then spent the night in the house. I'll never forget hearing about them waking up to the morning light coming through the Chinese Elm. Workshops with Max Nuñez, Oliver Lütjens, and Sebastian Multerer turned the VDL back into an active architecture practice, with students working around the house on drawings and models, proposing additions, arguing about the architecture in what used to be the office of Neutra and Associates. The workshop with Lanza Atelier took students on a research journey into one of Neutra's largest unbuilt projects and the communities it was designed for, resulting in a touching multi-sensorial installation throughout the house and garden.
Artist residencies and exhibitions brought a different kind of attention to the house, one that tested its limits and expanded its possibilities. “Built In” invited local artists, architects, writers, and designers to propose newly developed site-specific works for the house. After a year of pandemic closure, it was the right way to bring the community back: intimate, sometimes almost hidden contributions tucked throughout the VDL. Some visitors were delighted. Others arrived puzzled that the house numbers had been temporarily replaced with large, wobbly pink numbers, or that the penthouse curtains had been changed to translucent, iron-gate-patterned fabric. Other residencies and exhibitions, from Leonor Antunes to Maayan Elyakim, Veronika Kellndorfer, and beyond, each brought their own unique perspectives to the house, and gave visitors new ways of experiencing the house. Ephemeral programming like dance performances and lectures kept multiple audiences coming back to engage with the VDL, filling the house and the courtyard with life.
First and foremost, I am most grateful to Juhee Park, whose vision, support, and unseen labor made all of this possible. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the life of the house: the collaborators, artists, architects, supporters, and visitors. I'm deeply grateful to Cal Poly Pomona's College of Environmental Design and Department of Architecture for their ongoing commitment, and to Sarah Lorenzen, Lauren Bricker, Mary Anne Akers, and the many others who built and shaped what I inherited. Finally, I’m incredibly thankful to my students, whose dedication and curiosity were essential to keeping the house open and to sharing it with so many people.
Living and working at the VDL changed how we see architecture: not as a finished object, but as something that absorbs daily life, embraces nature, and opens itself up to community and art. It taught us that the most powerful architectural moves are often the smallest ones: a pass-through, a hidden door, a curtain drawn across a room. We will carry those lessons into everything we make at Aunt Studio . To keep in touch, you can reach me directly at noam@aunt.studio
The VDL continues. A new director will be announced soon, and the work of maintaining, activating, and sharing the house will carry on. Thank you for being part of it.
Warmly,
Noam Saragosti
